Desperate House-girlfriends of Beverly Adjacent

How To Spend A Day As A Full-Time Writer

Well, technically it was Friday but I had to celebrate being a full-time writer all day Friday, so things officially kicked-off yesterday.

Here is how I organized my endless hours of freedom.

6:30AM: I was awoken by R who had been up for a half an hour already. He tried to start talking to me but I said, “I wake up at 7AM now,” and went back to bed.

7:30-8:00am: Did a series of exercises culled from tear outs of Self Magazine fitness moves stolen from the dentist office. I thought about also running outside for a bit, but decided that was too aggressive for day one.

9:30am: Left the house for my morning writing session right on time. I’ve been debating which of the dozen plus local cafes to award my first session of my first day as a full-time writer for a few months, but finally landed on Paper and Plastik because it has the best table space to pretentiousness ratio.

9:30am to noon: I re-read the feature script I’ve been writing for the past two months, decided I like 10-15% of it, and started to re-work the entire thing from the beginning. New pages written: 7. Intagrams posted: 4. Coffees consumed: 2. Dollars spent: 6.

Noon to 12:30: I made myself some left over salad and wrestled with the idea of giving myself a full hour lunch break to watch TV. Side note: part of my neurosis around being a full-time writer involves guilt for doing anything “lazy” or “very fun.” This makes little to no sense, so I can only hope it will wane after a few weeks. In this specific circumstance I decided to allow myself 30 minutes of DVR’d SNL, in the name of “comedy research.” An hour and a half later, I got up off the couch.

3:00-4:15pm: General on the Paramount Lot. Yeah, I just name-dropped a lot.

4:15-8:00pm: Back home to work on the feature script; do some laundry; practice a hair up-do for a Saturday wedding; flip through Vanity Fair; call my Mom; re-arrange the candles in the bathroom; and drink a glass of wine as a toast to my first day as a full-time writer.

I’m going to call this a successful first day. Despite being no closer to actually earning money off this profession, I can officially spend an entire day doing it without going stir crazy, which is good considering I quit my job for this.

And now I will use the rest of this space to remind you to VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE!

5 comments

Haha I love this post because it sounds about as glamorous as my “writer days.” I work in an office two days a week and teach yoga, but Fridays I work exclusively on freelance client work. Despite the “writer” title, it’s pretty much “Write, email clients, write, drink coffee, ponder doing something about sweaty yoga pants, hipster glasses, and greasy ponytail, GChat about the merits of the Oxford Comma, look at myfriendsaremarried.tumblr.com, remind self that people are paying me to write words for them, write, contemplate going to yoga, eat chocolate instead.”